An ideal tool for engaging students in a flipped or blended learning classroom.

Welcome to The Answer Pad (TAP)

Welcome and thanks for reading The Answer Pad (TAP) blog. We plan on using this blog to help you, our customers (potential or actual), understand not only how to better use The Answer Pad website with it’s respective app, but also where we envision it going in the future. It will include FAQs, some success stories and also challenges that we’ve been up against.

Our hope is that the blog will inspire you to use The Answer Pad in a new way. We started working on our product in March, 2012 and released the first version in November, 2012. Our thought was the following; educators have been creating paper tests for decades. There must be stacks and stacks of tests hanging around schools. There’s no doubt that schools are getting more digitized all the time, but what are they doing with all the tests they created? They’re not, generally, hand typing them all into a computer. Who has time for that?

Schools need to gather student assessment information. Why not just capture their answers, since the tests already exist? Teachers can quickly create an answer sheet. Students sit down at their desks. They log into their computer, laptop or iPad. The teacher then hands them the actual test on paper (so there’s no way for them to already see the test online somewhere). The student reads the question on the paper, and answers it electronically. The student clicks “Turn in” and voila, both the teacher and the student can see how well they performed on the test. The teacher gets the needed data, using questions they trust, and only had to enter in the expected answers. Brilliant.

Sure, most people think this is just multiple choice. And, to be fair, they are often the easiest. We just thought that it’s not enough. That’s why we added pie shade-ins, rectangular shade-ins, fill-ins, a number wheel and coordinate grid question types. We also included a student scratch pad, so students could show and teachers could review their work.

There’s so much more to talk about, and it will be addressed. We just hope this gives a little insight into The Answer Pad and its TAPit app.